Cheap catalyst for making hydrogen

Researchers
have come up with a cheap way to make hydrogen which could potentially be used
as clean fuel for cars and in the electronics industry1.

Various
catalysts such as platinum are used to electrochemically split water into
hydrogen and oxygen. However, platinum is expensive, so in search of a cheap alternative,
scientists from the CSIR-Central Electrochemical Research Institute in India
synthesized nanorods of molybdenum trioxide and electrochemically reduced this
trioxide to its lower oxides. They then used the lower oxides of molybdenum as
catalyst to split water into hydrogen and oxygen.

At the end of
50th cycles, production of hydrogen increased significantly and maintained this
trend until the 70th cycle. Hydrogen production was enhanced up to 600 cycles,
attributed to the creation of oxygen vacancies in the catalyst.
Such vacancies increased hydrogen generation by speeding up electron transport.

After 600
cycles, hydrogen generation began to decrease due to formation of gas bubbles
on the electrode surface, which, in turn, disrupted the efficiency of the
catalyst.

“Since this
catalyst helps produce hydrogen from water, it could be used in all
electrolysis processes,” says lead researcher, Marappan Sathish.